


So...

by Unovis



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 17:38:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unovis/pseuds/Unovis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So the sex comes at the beginning.<br/>May contain meta. May contain ham. I wanted to write a slash story inside out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So...

So the sex comes at the beginning, slam on the table:

Slammed on his back on the table (Methos is), hair in the butter dish, butter, he notes, hands gripping the shaking sides for leverage while Mac jerks away his jeans, up, off and away, rough and roaring and towering in snowy boots laced to his knees; Mac towering between his legs now, Methos's knees over Mac's shoulders, Methos's heels pounding Mac's flannel plaid back, and Mac spreading Methos, spitting him, thumbs digging under him. Stars and sparks behind his eyelids and he bounces as he's banged.

There, that and that again. It's a fine hard shag, a good wring out the old, ring in the new year fuck.

So now they can talk, now they can breathe and see straight, and pick the broken biscuits from their hair.

"Joe says hello."

"He could have called."

They're naked on the bed, sprawled and lolling, louche as a Tom of Finland postcard. The lights are out, the lamp rocked awry. There' s an iron stove open with a fire in the grate, light licking planes and muscles and throwing enough heat to toast their toes. Mac's cabin, Mac's island, his back-of-beyond retreat, and he knows damn well how bad reception is out here in a storm. Some prickliness there that Methos will mine later. Later, after he's had his fill. Mac's hand on his thigh, now, heavy and broad, is more to the point.

"The hell. Hello says me, then. Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year."

"Not for hours, yet. You're looking fit."

Methos laughs and slaps Mac's stomach and leaves his hand there, for the pleasure of it. Fine golden skin, hair curling under his palm. He twists a finger in the navel. "You're bulging like a wrestler. Working out?" It's a silly question to the man who always trained like an athlete, like a warrior. It's a sane question to a man who's hardened up like an athlete. Like a warrior.

"Chopping wood and hauling water." Mac smiles. Nothing tight ens under Methos's palm or eyes. "It's quiet out here. No one around." And he slides his hand up Methos's thigh until his knuckles brush his sac, and Methos sighs. Ice rattles against the windowpanes.

"I joined a gym." -- Mac laughs at him, jiggling his knuckles. --"Pool, steam room, masseur. Came with the condo. Reminds me of the old days."

"Babylon?"

"New York." Methos rolls his eyes and Mac's hand expands and wanders. He sighs, again, and remembers Pompeii and strigels skimming oil from his hips.

"When did you live in New York?"

"Eighties. Seventies. Nineties. Twenties, for a while; Seventies, again."

"Connor was there, for most of then. I stayed with him. It's strange we never met. Connor gets around."

"Strange," says Methos, purring. He closes his eyes and arches his back under Mac's fondling grasp.

"It's strange we never met in Paris, you living there so long. You knowing Darius and Joe and Amanda." The fondling becomes a tug and Methos's purr becomes a growl.

"Good man," he says, baring teeth. He spreads himself, clenching fingers in Mac's belly and the bed. "Amanda doesn't like to share."

"You weren't screwing them all." It's more a question than not, mostly in fun and counterpoint to what his furrowing fingers and thumb are up to. Buttery yet.

"If I tell you I was, in...ah...in great detail, with illuminating demonstrations of technique, will you keep doing that?" He likes it, being handled, lazy devil; he settles an arm behind his head, he slides his hand from Mac's stomach down, down to squeeze a nicely thickened cock. Cock, he popped on his mental tongue. Cock MacCock of the Clan MacCock, and a damn long time coming to his...ah...

So now comes the flashback, while Mac plays and Methos's vision blurs.

Rebecca glowed in the honey light of late afternoon. She was as annoyingly luminous by moonlight. Methos ignored her offered cup of chocolate and stared out t he window. He was bored, skulking here like a new-molted crab, between homes, between names. He was waiting for the unfamiliar Immortal to leave the garden and Amanda's attentive company, to leave her free to make a third at cards. "She's fond of this one?"

Rebecca rustled, unseen, behind him; a shrug, or release of the chocolate pot. "He amuses her. A bit young yet, a bit rough; a good heart."

"Like a tree. She'll swing from his branches and come in dribbling bark." He frowned at the brown locks over broad shoulders in an unfashionable doublet. Feeling the arrow of his disapproval, possibly, the man looked up. Methos saw red, laughing lips, a powerful brow, and sharp eyes; eyes that hadn't found him, yet. "Unlikely. Unimpressive. What's his name?"

"Unimportant. My dear, he's leaving soon. Play a hand with me."

"You're too honest." Methos lingered by the window, stubbornly. "Amanda cheats. She's more entertaining to outwit."

"We'll play without rules; would that divert you?" She moved behind him, she laid her long white hand against his back.

Amanda never made a third for cards. Rebecca never told him Duncan's name. He drew it from the gardener and filed it away. Just in case.

The second time he saw Duncan MacLeod... but the vision shatters under the press of the present. So now we're back.

"Yes! Oh, yes! Oh, more!" Mac's fingers are stuffed up where they give good value now, sending jolts of lightning through his frame. Methos twists and presses down and arches up, his stiff dingus bobbing, jigging like a Harlequin on a stick. More, the greedy bastard wants more: "Your mouth, your mouth on me," he moans, and scratches nails across Mac's breast. Mac's cock is Mac's business now; he's that lost in his own sensation. It's all right. Mac likes it when he begs, likes to play him like a drum, likes to do things to him. It's sharp as revenge, sometimes.

Mac drives a thrust straight from his elbow that near separates Methos's ears from his head. And then, Methos's hands wrapped around his wrist, he stops. "Paris," he says.

"The...Hell!" howls Methos. Mac's wrist is like iron, his fingers rods, as Methos twists around them, as Mac draws them out, out and away. Up on his elbows, Methos is now, glaring at red lips and sharp brown eyes.

"Why didn't we meet in Paris? Earlier than we did?" Mac wipes his fingers on his thigh.

"I'll cut you up and sell you as bait! Who knows? Who gives a damn? Who said you were finished here?"

"Need permission, do I?" He grins, he sits up on the bed, he reaches for the robe hanging on the headboard post. "I missed dinner because of you; I'm hungry as a bear."

Lust, anger, frustration, and lust: Methos snaps his mouth shut. "Hungry? Swallow this!" He grabs his throbby, lonely dingus in his fist and gives it a shake at Mac's stiff and hardy cock, waving merrily back from the open robe. A shake, a squeeze, a sturdy stroke, and he'll finish himself. A waste of local resources, but one does what one must.

Mac slaps his hand away, stinging sensitive flesh. "Save it for dessert. Get up, you lazy bugger. Fill the kettle, find the bread." He hauls and Methos follows, to within an inch of that red mouth and broad chest. "And think about Paris."

So now comes the food part, or would, if Methos had any taste for it.

He doesn't. He squeezes the bread loaf in his fist. He butters thickly, peevishly, greasing his fingers and dropping blobs on his breast. He layers tongue and ham and genoa salami and when he bites he tastes and chews another flesh. MacLeod is the only meat he's set for. Eat and be eaten, that's his desire, and sandwich is a poor substitute. He watches Mac eat with gusto, without the courtesy of closing the damn robe, with wine wetting his lips and coarse mustard peppering his mustache. Methos blinks. The light is still dim. Mac has no mustache.

So here comes a second flashback, later than the first. It's more than mere memory: the sensory details rush in, the light, the feel, the smells.

Paris had come to mean Darius, his first port of call no matter how well or ill the state of their relations. Darius, always a calm center in an eddy of threats. Darius, a comfort and danger to know.

"His name is Duncan MacLeod."

"I know the name. I know of the man. I didn't think he was one of your damned protégés."

"He's not. He's different. He's important."

"And he's back in Paris; to kill for you?"

"My son..."

"Ah, we're celibate again. I'd forgotten. Your son. One of your many children, the meek and the fractious, alike. How do you keep them all in line?"

"If I say with love, will you laugh at me?"

 _Darius. Oh, Darius. The devil has nothing on you._ Methos burned his tongue on the execrable tea rather than answer.

There was one padded chair in these rooms and it was not the one Methos occupied. He wondered, picking a stray thread from the napkin, if the different, important MacLeod were offered the more comfortable seat. Perhaps his bottom was more amply cushioned than Methos's lean hips. He grinned and Darius tutted at the sight.

"You look like a satyr."

"It's the tea, Father. Goatweed, is it?"

"Coals to Newcastle. Does Adam Pierson have a fearsome reputation?"

"He's a monk, begging your pardon. Of the mild, abstemious variety."

Darius pursed his lips over his cup. "You're alone too much; it's unwholesome."

"Consider the alternative. Consider it well and in colorful detail, I don't mind."

"Satyr."

"Hypocrite."

"Stay away from him." The laughter lingered in his eyes, in the corners of his mouth, but Darius was not bantering now. "Sit safely within your Watchers and out of his path. Live your monkish, quiet life."

As if he needed warning away from a Challenge magnet like MacLeod. As if he were looking for a fight, a cause, a damned deluded White Knight. With a beautiful blonde woman in his bed and Amanda beating his borders and Darius measuring him for martyrdom. Why state the obvious? Why... "Is this supposed to be a lure? Am I truly a child?"

"Stay away from him, as you value your life," said Darius, again. "You're neither sword nor shield; keep it that way if you want to survive." The sun, setting through the window, gave him a nimbus of fire.

"I am the very image of your Man of Peace," said Methos wryly. And he tucked Duncan MacLeod back into his books.

*** 

"Is something wrong? Has the ham turned?"

Paris. Paris, Darius dead, Duncan MacLeod here with him. Ham turned, indeed. Methos looks at his hands, his lap, the window. Sleet pounds the cabin, the ground outside, the water, the miles and hours between here and anywhere else. He's naked and cold and he can feel where this man has penetrated him. He can hear himself begging for it. On Holy Ground. Oh, Methos.

"Paris," he says, and twists his mouth into a smile. "I do like the food."

Mac looks at him, soberly, and raises his glass. "To Paris. And the food." But they don't drink. Mac stands and belts his robe. There's little on the table to clear away. "Put another log on the fire. I'll make us something hot to take to bed."

"I'm full." He's not hungry any more. No dessert. He loads a split log in the stove's maw. He climbs back into the slick and cooled sheets and wraps them around his head. Paris, Darius, MacLeod. He unspools in his mind, not for the first or hundredth time, the moments when Duncan opened the door to his flat and first said his name.

So here comes the other POV.

Duncan's pissing in the bathroom, uncertain where the night turned sour. He didn't ask Methos questions he couldn't answer himself. There would be sex enough to come; Methos must know. It was a well-intentioned gibe, a j ape, a dig in the ribs. He misses Fitz. He misses Darius. He knows coincidence. He knows damn well why they never met.

He saw him, the unnamed man, leaving Darius's church. He'd noticed him before, the first time a century ago, watching himself and Amanda from a colonnade of the Louvre. Here one minute, gone the next. Amanda'd said, "Old friend, that's all."

"Older than you?"

"Don't bother him, he won't bother you," she smiled. Duncan shrugged.

This time, Darius at his elbow, Tessa and Richie in Paris...and to be protected, even from a non-combatant...he asked. "Who's that?"

"A sinner, like myself. Like us all. Let him be, he's no danger."

"I've seen him before."

"Paris is small, these days. Immortals are drawn to one another."

He wouldn't be put off, even by the holy man. "I've seen him before. He's old, Amanda says."

"Very old. But not always wise. Take my advice; if you see him, walk away."

Duncan MacLeod, he oft en claimed, ran from no man. "I won't walk away from a fight. I've caught him watching me, for a long time now."

Darius tweaked his arm. "You're an attractive man." He looked steadily, amusedly, as Duncan blinked, then flushed. "A harmless invert, that's all. But possibly best avoided, yes?" No virgin to men, Duncan MacLeod. But embarrassed enough in the company of Darius the saint.

And _old, old, old,_ chimed in his brain, and _watching me,_ when he came to protect Adam Pierson and found the legend instead. He laughed.

He laughs to himself, washing his hands. Would that story lighten Methos's mood as well? He glances in the mirror, down at his robe. He'd shared few memories of Darius; he isn't sure he wants to, now.

He walks back to the dark main room, to the corner with the bed, before the stove. Methos is under there somewhere, the comfort-loving lump. He climbs in as the bedside clock buzzes: midnight: New Year. He'd all but forgotten. B egin as you'd spend the year. He pulls the covers over both of them, cold legs against Methos's meager store of warmth.

Mac looks at Methos. " _Mi casa es su casa._ " Methos looks at Mac. "I said it first."

And here's the fade to black.

End

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post. Written for corbeaun in Amand-r's Holiday ShortCuts 2007 fest. Thanks to Carene, as ever, for reading and advising and suffering through my wretched writing process.


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